Wash it Out with Wine
by Saya-Sama
Summary: He has disowned them, they are not his children. So why does he feel what isn't his? The French Revolution.


**I love this time period so much, but I think that might be why it was hard to write for. Maybe it's backwards of me to find it difficult to write about things I'm familiar with...? In any case, I'm fairly happy with this, but find it a bit muddled...That might be a good thing though, all things considered. This story is based heavily off of Charles Dickens' _A Tale of Two Cities_.  
**

Francis realized with horrifying clarity just what his beautiful country had been reduced to when the cask of wine broke. In a busy street in the suburb of Saint Antoine a cask of wine burst open, it's dark liquid washing over the dirt and stone street pooling in the depressions between rough stones of the ground. For a moment there seemed to be a resounding silence where no one moved, they just looked and assessed the situation.

Then, all at once, the people on the street surged toward the mess, knelt near it and started drinking. Men got on their knees to drink as much of the liquor as they could hold in their cupped hands. A few of the more gentlemanly helped women get to the front so that they too, could enjoy the wine for themselves. Desperately people clawed at the mud on the ground, damning up all of the wine's escape routes. Some brought out cups to dip into the spoiled goods; others soaked their handkerchiefs in the wine and wrung them out over their children's mouths.

Francis was hit with a wave of disgust at the display, along with the most horrid urge to join them, which he pushed down and locked away. A few children were licking the broken cask now, gnawing on it as though the splintered wood would yield to them more of the desired substance. They were drinking that wine like it was the water of life; the crowd seemed to cherish that watery, weak, and worst of all muddy wine. He wouldn't even consider it wine and yet everyone was desperate to reach it and get just a small taste.

Francis had looked away with an afflicted expression. He couldn't bear to watch his own people act so shamefully any more.

000

For weeks after the incident Francis was disturbingly sober. All the fine wines his king sent him, he handed off to servants when he thought no one would notice. He couldn't drink it anymore; the liquid was acid in his mouth. It was because his mind was no longer clouded that he realized, truly realized, the pain that was coursing through his veins. He finally remembered why he'd maintained such a constant state of drunkenness in the first place; he'd felt the oncoming of this searing pain and had forced it away from himself with fine wine and good food.

Now it was with him though, Francis could no longer deny or ignore the state his body was in. He felt ill from the knowledge that his people were starved and oppressed and utterly enraged by it all, while he was pampered by the excessive upper classes and his king, though they knew not what he truly was, just that he was a permanent fixture of the court. Sickened, he was absolutely sickened; he was like a parent stealing from his children.

His, _his_ children, his beloved children were tired of it all, of the greedy hands that clung tightly to wealth and privilege and forced the common man to stay low to the ground. He felt their anger when he entered Versailles hoping that this meeting of the Estates–General would cure the illness that afflicted him and his nation, when nothing was achieved and their bitter feelings were only magnified.

When the assembly was dissolved, Francis left not with the ruling class but with the _communes_.

000

"My friend, are you intending to go to war with me?" Francis read the Declaration given to him with raising anger. What had Prussia and Austria to do with _France's_ internal affairs? His revolution had nothing to do with them.

'…_they regard the present situation of his Majesty the king of France as a matter of common interest to all the sovereigns of Europe.'_

Apparently, they thought this had everything to do with them.

"What? Where do you get that outta this?" Gilbert asked, gesturing to the paper held in Francis' hands. "We're just tellin' you to get your king back in power and sort yourself out."

"Really? Because this looks more like a threat to my children. You'll mobilize your armies if you have to in order to keep that man in power?" France was particularly stuck on the last few lines.

'_In the meantime __they __will give such orders to their troops as are necessary in order that these may be ready to be called into active service.'_

"There'll be no need for intervention as long as your king is allowed to rebuild the monarchy," Roderich said in a clipped tone. He was clearly the most worried about the revolution, what with his precious princess being Francis' queen.

"So it is a threat, you refuse to let my children liberate themselves!" Francis felt an unusual violent impulse rising in him; it was clouding his judgment, not letting him see the obvious. Austria didn't want a war, if Francis would just expand his vision a bit he'd realize that just from what he was reading.

"No you twit!" Gilbert scowled and snatched the paper back from Francis before his muddled mind could take him any further from the truth. "We don't care if you destroy yourself from the inside out; just keep your mess out of our houses!"

"If my revolution overflows into your houses it only shows that your children too are unhappy! You would forsake your children for a king?"

Gilbert twitched angrily at the accusation and grabbed the front of Francis' shirt. He was hardly taller than Francis, but somehow he used that bit of height to make him seem incredibly intimidating. "Look at yourself you idiot! You're going on about your children, your children, but the class your children want to kill are also your children! You're killing your own, don't you get that?"

"They are not mine." It was while glaring down into the blond man's once clear blue eyes that Gilbert saw the veil covering them, hiding the truth from him. With a snarl he jerked his hands away from Francis.

"This is pointless," he said to Roderich, "he can't be reasoned with anymore."

Francis glared as the two left him, his disdain written clearly on his face. "You'll understand soon," he muttered, "they are not your own, either."

000

He sat in a confiscated house in Paris, in the Saint Germain Quarter, to be more specific. He drank tea because he still couldn't find it in himself to drink wine, despite how watery and decidedly un-wine-like everything available to him was. He sat before the window, in the comfort of what was undoubtedly a splendid manor at some time, and watched from the relative comfort of the family room the events unfolding just in the courtyard.

A throng of men and women were congregating around a grindstone that had been brought into the courtyard. Where it had come from he didn't know, he had only seen the men carry it in through the gates. Madly two men turned the grindstone, looking possessed by something more frightful than demons. They were covered in blood and sweat and once-fine, now bloodstained clothing that they didn't know how to wear properly.

But they were only the beginning. In the crowd there were many just like them: barbarous, a mess of gore and pillaged goods. As the gruesome warriors waited impatiently in line for the grindstone they showed their weapons, dull from murder, to one another. Drying blood fell from the blades, flaked off their moving hands as they flaunted their prizes, which were a mix of body parts and material possessions. The women drank red wine carelessly, allowing it to slosh from the bottle and over their fronts, so uncaring for the thing that had once been so precious. Thankfully, there seemed to be no children in the crowd.

As Francis saw all of this and felt their blood lust both internally and externally as it radiated toward him, he pondered over the state of his beloved country once again. His people no longer scrambled for wine but for blood instead, the crimson liquid as precious as any commodity. Death pervaded his borders and he could feel it, he could feel those filthy people (not his children, never his) die as they were slaughtered by the tens. He could feel it and it tore at him and why, why could he still feel what he disowned?

Closing the curtains, Francis sighed and took a sip of his now cold tea as he thought on these things. It would be worth it, it had to be, there was no other alternative. There was just Liberty, Equality, Fraternity or Death_. _

**1. The first scene is from chapter 5 of _Recalled to Life_,The Wine-shop. The Last is from _The Track of a Storm_, The Grindstone. **  
**2. While the country was more or less bankrupt and the general population was starving to death and could hardly afford air, the noble class seemed unable to stop spending money. Add that to the fact that Enlightenment ideals were making the common man resent just about anything that wasn't the common man, and you've got yourself a fine mess of pre-revolutionary France.**  
**3. Revolutionists thought that they were going to get somewhere when the Estates-General came together in 1789. Obviously, they didn't. So little was accomplished in fact, that the Third Estate just said "screw it, we're making our own government," then proceeded to form the National Assembly, which the King kicked out of their meeting hall. So instead of meeting in the _Salle des États, _the National Assembly decided to meet on King Louis XVI's tennis courts.**  
**4. The Declaration of Pillnitz was made by Austria and Prussia. It basically said that the French Revolution was relevant to their interests, and that they wanted the monarchy reestablished in France. It also said that Austria would only go to war if everyone else agreed to go with it.**  
**5. French revolutionaries were looking to spread the revolution, starting with the Austrian Netherlands. Less than a year after the Declaration of Pillnatz, France declared war on Austria. **

**As you can tell, I really loved _A Tale of Two Cities_, dunno why people moan and groan when they have to read it in class. I don't know how I feel about Francis' portrayal here. I hope you enjoyed it nonetheless.**


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